p. 38 | A Deceived Heart by C. H. Spurgeon

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Jul 4, 1865

A Deceived Heart.

By C. H. Spurgeon

THERE are many cunning flatterers in the world, but the most cunning is man's own heart. A man's own heart will flatter him even about his sins. A man is a grasping miser—his heart flatters him that he is only exercising proper business habits. A man on the other hand is extravagant, and spends the good gifts of God upon his own evil passions; then his heart tells him he is a liberal soul. The heart turns "sweet into bitter, and bitter into sweet." "Well," says he, "it is true I drink too much, but then, there's never a time I refuse a guinea toward a charity. It is true," says he, "I am not certainly, what I should be, in my moral character, but still, see how regularly I keep to my church or chapel. It is true," says he, "I don't now and then mind a trick or two in my trade, but I am always ready to help the poor." And so he imagines that he blots out an evil trait in his character with a good one, and thus flatters his own heart. And see how self-contented and satisfied he is. The poor child of God is trying his own heart with the deepest possible anxiety; this man knows of no such thing. He is always fully assured that he is right. The true believer is sitting down and turning over his accounts day by day, to see whether he be on the road to Heaven; or whether he has mistaken his evidence and has been deceived. But this man, self-satisfied, bandages his own eyes and walks deliberately on, singing at every step, straight to his own destruction. I know of some such now.—C. H. Spurgeon.